Mark Zuckerberg has given half a billion dollars to charity - in Facebook stock. The Facebook CEO has donated 18 million Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, where the money will go to health and education causes.
Zuckerberg's $498.78m gift doesn't make too much of a dent on his stock holdings - he had …

COMMENTS

Taxation

My understanding (please correct me if I am wrong) is that he will be able to put on his tax return, in the next year or two that he has given these shares away to charity. However, the IRS don't calculate his splendiferousness based on the price at the time they were given away, but at the time they do the calculations.

So if he gives them away today at $27, but when he declares the gift (in say 2 years time), the IRS will take the price then (for example $35) and then he gets tax relief based upon that figure. So instead of 30 million at $27 = $810 million, he will be allowed to claim 30 million at $35 = $1,050 million as a donation. He gets 240 million extra allowance.

Good on you, mate!

I'm a bit wary of people being very public with their charity, but always better to publicise one's charity than to not give anything at all. So well done Mr. Zuckerberg!

Re tax deductibility, that's the case now but I belive one of the tax provisions with a good chance of being stricken off in the latest round of US tax-code whack-a-mole is the charitable deduction. That's a big plus since research shows that deductability of charitable donations has very little effect on total charitable donations. So while I'm sure his zuckness will be happy to take any deduction, I am happy to think that he would have done it anyway even without the deduction